"Well, I'm quite sure that whatever I dreamt about was of paramount importance," I sighed. Then, rather than despairing over the lost opportunity, I shrugged my shoulders and rolled my eyes. "Well, there is no point despairing over it. If I can't remember it, no amount of mental struggle will change it," I decided out loud.
One could either remember their dream or not. There was no in-between as human memory would work differently when asleep than how it would act when awake.
During one's conscious period, one would store things in their temporary memory before allowing their instincts to sort all the memories and extract those valuable enough to keep them in the long-term memory.
When it came to dreaming, though, unless one practices certain techniques to reclaim their consciousness even while asleep… Then everything about the dream would be stored within the short-term memory.
Or in other words, unless I made an active effort, first thing after waking up, to remember as much as I still could…
Well, then I would end up just like I did in reality, with nothing more but a fleeting feeling of how insanely important the content of that dream was.
Sadly, now that it was gone, there was no use trying to bring it back.
"That's quite the happy-go-lucky approach, isn't it?" Mia pointed out with a small smile.
"Well, rather than trying my hardest to recall something I know I can't, I would rather focus my efforts on what I actually can do," I explained my stance.
If it was that easy to recover memories discarded from short-term memory, it wouldn't fill its purpose well in the first place. And so, rather than putting holes into a system that worked really well, I decided to just accept the loss and move on.
"Speaking of doing stuff," Mia pulled herself up, flashing her chest right into my eyes for a second it took her to grab her robe and start putting it on. "What are your plans for today?"
"That's… a good question," I replied softly and with some hesitation.
Maybe it was the influence of the dream or maybe it was just a random idea that I'd got during the night… But there was a certain question stuck in my mind when it came to the tasks on hand.
"You remember how I talked a lot about the… earth, last night?" I suddenly asked.
Just in case, I didn't use words like another world, another timeline or another reality.
While there was no risk of someone capable of eavesdropping on me here, I still disliked the idea of just outright speaking about that stuff.
Still, for Mia's reference, just using the word "earth" as a handle for the topic would suffice.
"Yeah, I do," Mia nodded her head, nearly done dressing up. She wrapped two pieces of thick material around her waist, turning the long piece of cloth into some sort of a belt.
'I need to get us new clothes,' I thought upon noticing Mia's strange belt.
She didn't use it to hold her clothes in place, not yet. They were damaged, but not destroyed to the point of needing support accessories just to hold them together.
No, Mia used those pieces of cloth to cover the holes in her robes, keeping even the tiniest details of her body only for my eyes to see.
"What about it?" Mia asked, turning over once she finished wrapping up the two pieces of cloth right on top of her abdomen.
"I realized that a lot of my plans and ideas were born on earth and thus suited for the world that's not here," I admitted.
While there were some ideas that could be universally applied, other things had to be addressed all on their own.
I could apply some kind of knowledge and ideas while there was no point in adapting others.
Because no matter how ingenious the ideas from Earth could be, they were all designed for earthy rules!
"I thought a bit about how we should go around growing this place," I revealed my thoughts as I sat down on the edge of the bed. "But no matter how much I thought, I could only see a single path."
This time, I turned silent.
I could just keep on going and reveal what I believed to be the only way to make developing this abandoned city possible. But out of curiosity, I ended up testing Mia a little to see if she would come up with the same answer as I did.
In the end, while I found a way around that already, following what I planned would force me to accept a pretty damn hefty cost. And right now, my hopes were that Mia could maybe figure out something that wouldn't come at this kind of a steep prize.
Mia sat down by my side before bringing her hand to her chin. Her fingers then massaged it for a moment before she turned to look me straight in the face.
"The only way to keep going… is to abandon this place, right?" she then suggested.
'So she didn't see any other path,' I thought, disappointed.
I wasn't angry at the girl for not meeting my expectations. Instead, I was simply saddened because, in a sense, her answer proved she was thinking in the same way I did.
If I didn't want to lose my freedom, leaving this town and all the people that we brought here was inevitable. After all, just like that last fight with the attackers proved, if I wanted to keep this place safe, I had to remain here at all times.
"I realized that I put too much focus on trying to adapt things from Earth into this place. What I didn't pay enough attention to, though, were the solutions people of this place already had."
Instead of a democracy, autocracy, or any other system of government that I knew from my original life, the best choice for me right now was to become a patriarch.
The most important figure in the entire sect; one tasked with keeping the sect safe and prosperous in exchange for his status.
So yeah, if I wanted this town to prosper… I had to become its patriarch. Or, in other, less flattering words, I had to give up on my freedom and become an eternal guardian of this place.
"Well, I quite enjoy spending my days in here with you by my side," I finally spoke out, quickly coming to accept the reality.
If it was my freedom that I would have to give up, give up for the rest of my life… I would likely refuse. But giving it up temporarily?
There was no problem whatsoever!
Still, if I wanted to free myself from the shackle I was now considering to burden myself with… I had no other choice but to focus on grooming people that could replace me later on. And while the formation that I crafted downstairs was the first step on that road…
Now that I decided to take care of this place properly, just the mundane methods I originally intended to use wouldn't cut it!
No.
If I wanted to turn this place into an oasis of civilization in the middle of the crumbling world, I had to hurry up and create at least a few powerful allies.
And it just so happened that I had a nearly endless supply of the power that already proved to be far more effective than anything anyone cultivated in this world!
Updat𝒆d fr𝒐m freew𝒆bnov𝒆l.c(o)m